Peabody Energy officials said Wednesday that the company is implementing a new global organizational structure, with the creation of geographic business units in the Americas, Australia and Asia.

New leaders named to head business unit teams in the new structure are:

President and Chief Commercial Officer Richard Navarre has been named president – Americas.

Eric Ford, Peabody’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, has been named president – Australia, located in Brisbane.

Chris Hagedorn has been named president – Asia and Coal Trading. He most recently served as Peabody’s senior vice president of global sales and trading support.

"With our recent acquisition, the size of our global platform has grown significantly and reached a logical point to bring a greater business focus at geographic and market levels, while maintaining controls and key centralized functions at the corporate level," Peabody Energy Chairman and CEO Greg Boyce said in a statement. "With major international and U.S. operations and sales and trading activities, it is a natural evolution to refocus our resources and talents to deliver enhanced results across our global platform."

The new business unit presidents will continue to report to Boyce, as will central corporate functions, the company said.

St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp. (NYSE: BTU) is the world’s largest private sector coal company and reported $7.97 billion in 2011 revenue.